on the polysemy of help - openedition

LexisJournal in English Lexicology

9 | 2015

Utterer-Centered Studies on Lexical Issues

On the polysemy of help

Mathilde Pinson

Electronic version

URL: http://journals.openedition.org/lexis/943DOI: 10.4000/lexis.943ISSN: 1951-6215

Publisher

Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3

Electronic reference

Mathilde Pinson, « On the polysemy of help », Lexis [Online], 9 | 2015, Online since 13 May 2015,connection on 19 April 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/lexis/943 ; DOI : 10.4000/lexis.943

This text was automatically generated on 19 April 2019.

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Mathilde Pinson

Introduction

1 Looking at lexical items from a speaker-oriented perspective can be done from a variety

of angles. One of the first speaker-dependent aspects which have been revealed in the

literature is the influence on language of the speaker’s temporal and/or spatial

localisation, i.e. deixis, e.g. Benvéniste [1966]; Maingueneau [1976]. Others also focus on

how lexical items may reflect the subjectivity of the speaker, in terms of axiological or

epistemic evaluation, e.g. Kerbrat-Orrechioni [2002 (1980)]. Contrasting with formal

frameworks, which posit the autonomy of syntax, most speaker-oriented approaches

study how meaning emerges in context, through an intricate combination of both syntax

and semantics. One of the major breakthroughs of speaker-oriented approaches is to have

shown that the grammatical well-formedness of a sentence does not guarantee its

acceptability [Culioli 1990-1999]. Many perfectly correct sentences cannot be uttered

because they would violate other types of constraints related to pragmatics and

subjectivity. Indeed, the focus is on language as an act of communication and utterances

have to be apprehended in context, notably in interaction. This new direction is

accompanied by a thorough study of semantics and of the subtle differences in meaning

that distinguish alternative variants with quasi-similar informational content. In order to

go deeper into the semantics of lexical and grammatical items, and to understand

underlying mechanisms, speaker-oriented researchers often endeavour to identify their

invariant pole.

2 Apart from deixis, which is unrelated to the case of the verb help, all the other dimensions

mentioned above are relevant to the study of this verb. More specifically, this paper will

focus on the polysemy of the verb help, the emergence of meaning in context and

particularly the emergence of new senses over the course of history. The main research

questions are: 1) what do the various uses of help have in common? and 2) how can we

account for the appearance of the secondary uses of help?


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3 I will first address the semantics of prototypical help, before focusing on the emergence of

each of the other meanings of help. I will finally propose a semantic grid and a graph for

the verb help, in order to summarise what its various meanings share semantically and

how they diverge.

1. The semantics of prototypical help

4 The notion of prototype [Rosch 1973] refers to the ‘best’ representative of a category. The

prototype theory makes it possible to apprehend categories in all their complexity, as it

includes the possibility for members of a given category to be more or less central,

therefore challenging the conception that all members have to share the same set of

features.

5 In that respect, the prototype theory converges to some extent with Culioli’s notional

domains, with their borders, their interior and exterior and their organising centres

[Pauly 2010: 86].

6 When native speakers of English are asked about the meaning of the verb help, they

invariably associate it with the notion of assistance. Moreover, a sample of 100

occurrences of the verb help in the Corpus of Contemporary American English [Davies

2008-] exhibits this meaning of assistance 95 % of the time. This prototypical meaning is

also the oldest meaning of the verb, as the Oxford English Dictionary testifies (s.v. help).

7 As a dynamic verb (in the sense of Talmy [2000] and Jackendoff [1990: 133]), the central

meaning of the verb help implies an interaction between protagonists followed by an

effect. Prototypically, it associates an animate helpee with an animate helper, who

performs some task for the former.

1.1. Participation of each protagonist

8 The exact share of action undertaken by each participant is, however, not explicitly

encoded in the verb. In some cases, both participants take part in the action in

(relatively) equal amount. For instance in the following example, the process carry it up to

my room, which refers to the lifting of a heavy referent (a freezer), implies that the action

is likely to be performed by both participants together:

(1) “I have to keep this freezer here,” Thorn said.

“You can’t put it there. It’s not convenient.”

“Will you help me carry it up to my room?” (COCA, 2011, FICTION)

9 Conversely, in other cases, the type of infinitive verb following help indicates that the

helpee is the one who performs the process encoded in the infinitive clause, not the

helper. This is what we observe in the case of predicates that express individual

physiological or psychological processes, such as the following:

(2) Think only of your own welfare and mine and do the right thing, the

Christian thing, and help me to die properly. (COCA, 1994, FICTION)

(3) Mr. Griffith helped me to understand who I could become if I kept trying.

(COCA, 1998, SPOKEN)


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10 In the case of these internal processes, the helper performs some task towards an

outcome which concerns the helpee alone. These examples contrast with cases in which

the part played by the helpee is insignificant. In an utterance like:

(4) Voice-over: Things were so bad, they concluded the only way to end their

suffering was to commit suicide. After a 43-day hunger strike, her mother,

brother and sister all slit their wrists. But not even that worked […].

Oufkir: After 43 days of a hunger strike, you cut your veins but the blood

doesn’t flow. He helped me open it with a piece of broken glass. (COCA, 2001,

SPOKEN)

the helpee may play no part at all in the opening process. It is quite clear that she wants

the infinitive process to happen, but she probably does not do anything towards this aim,

since such an action is likely to be performed by a single agent.

The exact share of action undertaken by each participant is therefore not

what defines ‘help’. The type of complementation, however, has been used to

specify the role of each participant, as the question of the presence versus

absence of to after help suggests.

1.2. To versus zero after help: an overview

11 In Old English, the verb help was associated with an animate recipient in the dative,

optionally followed by an adverbial clause denoting purpose (Los [2005]). It subsequently

became a ditransitive verb, as the possible wh-extraction of (a part of) the object suggests1

(cf. Chomsky [1980]):

(5) He helped [you] [to build a house].

(5’) What did he help you to build?

(6) You need his help [(in order) to build a house].

(6’) *What do you need his help (in order) to build?

12 The purposive origin of the infinitive clause explains why to was initially present, but its

use has now ceased to be compulsory. While formal frameworks posit that the infinitive

marker is completely devoid of meaning [Chomsky 1957: 100], many researchers working

within the framework of speaker-oriented theories have tried to identify a semantic

invariant for to (e.g. Adamczewski [1982]; Cotte [1982]; Chuquet [1986]), and so have some

cognitivist researchers (e.g. Egan [2008]).

13 Among the speaker-oriented linguists who have looked for a core value of to that could

subsume both the preposition and the infinitive marker, the work of Duffley [1992], in

particular, has proved seminal. Regarding the alternation between to and zero after help,

he claims that the absence of to is correlated with more agentivity on the part of the

helper.

14 This implies that inanimate subjects are incompatible with the omission of to, and so are

infinitive predicates denoting individual psychological or physiological processes (cf.

supra). It also implies that the speaker can express the directness or indirectness of the

helping process through the omission or the use of to (cf. Dixon [1991]; Fischer [1995]).

The well-foundedness of these observations can be illustrated by the following examples,

dated from the 19th century and the early 20th century:

– animate vs. inanimate subject:


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(7) I’ll help you Ø catch the Englishman. (James Fennimore Cooper, The Pilot,

1824)

(8) Here is a ring whose signet may help us to understand each other. (James

Fennimore Cooper, The Bravo, 1831)

– individual process:

(9) And you’d be doing her a much more neighborly act if you helped her to

realize the value of money, instead of encouraging her to throw it away.

(COHA, 1928, FICTION)

– direct help:

(10) However, he told her that she would have to eat up all the meat. She said

she couldn’t. “I will help you Ø eat,” said the man. (The Journal of American

Folklore, 1888)

– indirect help:

(11) [She] could neither sit nor be made to sit; she had an attendant to move

her and help her to eat. ( Publications of the Oriental Translation Fund,

University of Michigan, 1922)

15 As can be seen in (10) and (11), when it comes to eating, the helping process can be done

by eating a part of the food (direct help) or by, say, holding a fork for the eater (indirect

help).

16 However, the clear-cut semantic distinction between to and zero had considerably

loosened by the mid-twentieth century. Corpora show that the omission of to has now

become compatible with all of the above cases. It can occur with inanimate subjects and

indirect help:

(12) Pepsodent Tooth Paste helps Ø stop decay before it starts. (Saturday

Evening Post, 1950)

as well as with individual psychological or physiological processes:

(13) Mr Parish helped me Ø understand this problem when I several times

proposed moving a painting or a statue to take a photograph. (COHA, 1958,

MAGAZINE)

17 This innovation is undoubtedly partly due to reasons of economy, but other possible

causes can be suggested. None of these factors constitute categorical constraints but they

can be hypothesised to have had some influence on the increase of the use of zero. They

include euphonic and cognitive principles such as stress alternation [Schlüter 2003] e.g.

He ˈhelped me ˈmake my ˈbed. Another such potential factor is horror aequi (see Bolinger

[1979]; Rohdenburg [2003]; McEnery & Xiao [2005]) e.g. ?I want to help him to write (see

Pinson [2009: 159-163] for a quantitative analysis of the influence of horror aequi on the

omission of to after help in the 18-19th centuries).

18 The semantic distinction between the two variants may also have contributed to the

decrease in the use of to, because of the influence of advertising language on everyday

English. Indeed, as example (12) illustrates, advertisers generally favour the zero version,

because it is an excellent way to subtly enhance the efficiency of the product advertised,

while remaining within the bounds of legalities of truth (Pinson [2009: 189-191]). Because

of increasing exposure to the zero version, speakers/hearers ceased to conceive it as


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encoding direct help and started to see it as the default version, a process known as

habituation Haiman [1994]. So, paradoxically, the exploitation of the semantic distinction

may therefore have led to its gradual demise.

19 The omission of to is on its way to becoming the statistical norm, except in syntactically

and cognitively complex co-texts, such as the negation of the infinitive verb, and the

passive voice (cf. Wierzbicka [1988: 49]). Between 1961 and 1991, the percentage of the use

of zero after help increased from 22 % to 60.8 % in British English and from 68.3 % to 81.9

% in American English [McEnery & Xiao [2005]. This sharp increase suggests that the

semantic distinction is no longer a meaningful criterion to explain the alternation

between to and zero.

20 Recent research (e.g. Egan [2008], who works within a cognitive framework) now tends to

acknowledge that “the semantics of the two constructions are […] very similar [in the

case of help] and it should not therefore be surprising that in many instances speakers

may choose to use either of them to encode one and the same situation” (Egan [2008:

214]) and that “this distinction between the two construction types is blurred in the case

of help” (Egan [2008: 243]).

2. The core value of help

21 As suggested by the fact that the NP following help was originally a dative, the semantic

core of help seems, at first sight, to be based on the fact that the effect of the process is

seen as beneficial for the helpee. When a helper helps a helpee, it is not clear who does

what exactly, and in which proportion, but what is certain is that the result is seen as

positive for the helpee.

22 In that respect, help is an evaluative verb that constitutes an indication of the subjectivity

of the speaker. Based on Kerbrat-Orecchioni’s typology of verbs [2002 (1980): 113 ff.], help

can be said to belong to the list of inherently subjective verbs. The evaluation emanates

from the speaker; the object of the evaluation is the process expressed in the infinitive

clause and the type of evaluation is axiological. More specifically, the speaker evaluates

that the process expressed by the infinitive is good for the referent of the first object of

the verb.

2.1. The polysemy of help

23 The prototypical semantics of help reflects a process whereby some participant acts in a

way that is beneficial to some other participant, but does the euphoric denotation

associated with prototypical help apply to the other meanings of this verb?

24 Although dictionaries do not reflect the complexity of polysemy, they can constitute a

useful starting point for a first tentative analysis of help, which will be refined in the

remainder of this paper. Dictionaries usually list five different meanings for the verb help.

Apart from the prototypical meaning (15a and 15b), one notes the meanings “alleviate/

cure” (16); “contribute” (17); “provide/serve” (18); as well as the meaning “not be able to

control or stop”, associated with the phrase cannot help (19)2.

25 Each of these senses is illustrated in the following utterances:


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(15) (a) They helped me to get to where I’m at today. (COCA, 2012, NEWS)

(b) One of her older brothers took her hand to help her across the

highway. (COCA, 1998, FICTION)

(16) Amma applied a paste of turmeric and egg yolk to help the pain and

swelling. (COCA, 2000, FICTION)

(17) The Government’s decision to axe half-price coach fares for the over-60s

saw one million fewer pensioners travel with National Express last year,

helping to send the transport firm’s annual pre-tax profit down 9 % to

£164.1 million. (Evening Standard, 28/02/2013)

(18) He helps himself to a melon from a bowl. (COCA, 1997, FICTION)

(19) This woman can’t help but giggle. (COCA, 2012, SPOKEN)

26 Quite clearly, the beneficial value is absent from sentence (17), in which help is closer to

the meaning of the verbs cause or contribute (cf. Mair [1995], [2002: 126]; Deléchelle

[1998]). By contrast, the verb help in sentence (19) corresponds to notions such as refrain

or avoid. How is it possible to reconcile such contradictory meanings as ‘contribute’ and

‘avoid’?

2.2. A semantic invariant?

27 Researchers working within the framework of speaker-oriented theories or

psychomechanics usually endeavour to find an invariant semantic value for polysemous

words. This is especially true for grammatical items (e.g. Joly [1980]; Adamczewski [1982];

Chuquet [1986]; Culioli [1990-1999]; Franckel & Paillard [2007]), but also for lexical items

(e.g. Picoche [1995]; Victorri & Fuchs [1996]; Cadiot [1994]; Franckel & Lebaud [1995];

Paillard [2000]; de Vogué [2004], Pauly [2010]). For instance, Picoche, following Guillaume,

posits that polysemous lexical items have a ‘potential meaning’ which can account for the

multiple senses observable in context; Franckel and others, following Culioli, endeavour

to identify the ‘schematic form’, or abstract scenario of polysemous verbs.

28 However, the existence of a semantic invariant is far from being straightforward, as

shown notably by Girard [1996], Kleiber [1999], Puckica [2008] and Toupin & Lowry [2010].

Approaches in favour of an invariant pole claim that the use of the same word for

different meanings cannot be attributed to chance and that there has to be some

semantic feature in common between all the senses of this word (except of course in cases

of homonymy). Although it is evident that polysemy is not random, it is far from certain

that all the meanings of a verb share a common semantic core or display a common

scenario.

29 When Paillard, Franckel, and others, work on schematic forms, they manage to account

for the various literal and figurative meanings of verbs, but seldom do they have to

describe such strikingly contradictory meanings as those observed in the case of help. In

order to reconcile all the meanings of help, and in particular ‘avoid’ and ‘contribute’, one

would have to bridge an unbridgeable gap. The only type of scenario that could reflect

the meaning of help would be that the verb help means that an action a is related to a

situation x. Is it really appropriate to reduce the meaning of help to such a broad scenario,

which could also correspond to hundreds of other verbs?

30 As Lakoff [1987: 95-96] suggests, “categories on the whole need not be defined by common

properties” and “central members are linked to other members, which are linked to other

members, and so on”. In the case of help, it is not always easy at first sight to identify the


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ties which unite each member, as some of the connections have become opaque. That is

why it seems interesting to look at the semantics of help from a diachronic perspective in

order to determine how less central meanings emerged (cf. e.g. Geeraerts [1983], [1997]).

31 The first meaning that will be addressed here is ‘provide/serve’, which is encoded by the

form help [NP] to [NP].

3. Helpserve

32 The meaning ‘serve’ (often for food), which was illustrated by sentence (18) above, is

related to the prepositional construction found for the expression of movement (20-21),

which is still in use today:

(20) Alef helped him to bed, and bade him a good night. (COCA, 2009,

FICTION)

(21) Soldiers helped her across the tarmac, as she was still recovering from

gunshot wounds and her three-week imprisonment in Iraq. (COCA, 2003,

MAGAZINE)

33 These spatial uses of help can easily be derived from the prototypical meaning of the verb.

The only difference between the two is that the process following help is here encoded

elliptically with a prepositional phrase, rather than with an infinitive clause.

34 The first instances of the prepositional construction date back to 1380, according to the

OED (s.v. help verb). The meaning of this construction was not restricted to purely spatial

uses, such as ‘help to reach’ (cf. 20-21), but also included cases with a more metaphorical

movement, toward an object of some sort, which could be paraphrased as ‘provide’. The

purely spatial uses have persisted, but the other types of uses, in which the NP following

the preposition does not indicate a location, are now obsolete, as the following examples

suggest:

(22) The Protector [told] him that if he would help him to the Sight of Mr.

Howe, [...] he would then give his judgement. (Edmund Calamy, A

Continuation of the Account of the Ministers..., 1727)

(23) There were the two Persons of the Kingdom the King was most obliged

to, since they helped him to the Victory of Bosworth [...]. (M. Rapin de

Thoyras, History of England, 1728)

(24) He had teiz’d my Mother 500 times to help him to a Wife. (Old Bailey,

1725)

(25) I should help you to success. (Dickens, Nicholas Nickelby, 1839)

35 These cases, in which help [NP] to [NP] means ‘provide’ rather than ‘help to reach’, have

completely disappeared, except for the restricted meaning ‘provide food/serve’.

According to the OED, the first occurrence of this sense is exhibited in the following

sentence:

(26) Shall I help you to a piece of Veal? (Guy Miege, The Great French

Dictionary, 1688)

36 As the unnaturalness of examples (22) – (25) demonstrates, the help [NP] to [NP] structure

meaning ‘provide’ has now been replaced by infinitive clauses. These sentences would

sound more acceptable to our modern ears if they were re-written as follows:


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(22’) The Protector told him that if he would help him to see/meet Mr. Howe,

he would then give his judgement.

(23’) There were the two Persons of the Kingdom the King was most obliged

to, since they helped him to win at Bosworth

(24’) He had teiz’d my Mother 500 times to help him to find a Wife.

(25’) I should help you to succeed.

37 In a similar vein, it is fruitful to compare the following utterances, pronounced 180 years

apart.

(27) The Prisoner said in his Defence, that he enquiring of a Baker’s Man for

Business, he promised to help him to a Place. (Old Bailey, 1717)

(28) The RECORDER suggested that Mr. Wheatley might help him to find

work. (Old Bailey, 1896)

38 The gradual replacement of help [NP] to [NP] by help + infinitive clause is illustrated in

table 1, which shows the percentage of these two structures in the Old Bailey for two

distinct periods.

Table 1. Proportion of help [NP] to [NP] versus help + infinitive in the Old Bailey

Help [NP] to [NP]

(purely spatial cases excluded)Help + infinitive

1700-174059,09 %

(130)

40,9 %

(90)

1800-18405,7 %

(49)

94,3 %

(807)

39 Table 1 shows that the help [NP] to [NP] structure has decreased dramatically over the

course of time. Between 1700 and 1740, nearly 60 % of cases of the verb help were followed

by to NP. This percentage decreased to less than 6 between 1800 and 1840. This decrease is

therefore dramatic and it is highly significant statistically (p << 0,0001). Many uses

exhibiting the [NP] to [NP] structure involved the expression of processes (cf. sight, victory

and success in the above cases). Infinitival structures being more clausal than noun

phrases, they were seen as more appropriate to encode such processes.

40 With the meaning ‘serve’, on the other hand, it is an entity which is provided.

Consequently, this specialised use was not affected by the syntactic change that

concerned the expression of processes. Therefore, during the nineteenth century, the

general meaning ‘help to obtain / provide’ decreased, while the sense ‘serve’ persisted, as

the following table suggests.

Table 2. The semantics of the help [NP] to [NP] structure in the Old Bailey: provide vs. serve

General help [NP] to [NP]

meaning ‘provide’

Specialised help [NP] to [NP food]

meaning ‘serve’


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1800-182073 %

(19)

27 %

(7)

1821-184056.5 %

(13)

43.5 %

(10)

41 The sense ‘to serve (food)’ was completely absent from the Old Bailey in the period

between 1700 and 1750 but it gradually increased during the early 19th century, reaching

around 40 % of the cases of help [NP] to [NP] in the period between 1821 and 1840. In the

OED, the first mention of the corresponding noun, helping, referring to the action of

serving food or to a portion of food, dates back to the early nineteenth century (s.v.

helping, noun).

42 On the whole, occurrences of helpserve involve reflexive pronouns, rather than simple

pronouns. The following graph, based on COHA, shows the raw figures for the following

string: help* [non-reflexive personal pronoun] to [singular noun / a / some]. Only the

instances involving food and drink are mentioned here.

Figure 1. Occurrences of help(s/ing/ed) + [non-reflexive personal pronoun] + to + [singular noun / a / some] in COHA

43 As can be seen, the meaning ‘serve’ only marginally occurred with non-reflexive

pronouns in COHA and this type of pronoun has now virtually disappeared.

44 When the structure involves a reflexive pronoun, the verb predominantly encodes a

transfer of food or drink. A study on the string ‘help* [reflexive pronoun] to’ in COCA

shows that the percentage of food and drink is 75.8 % (385/508); the rest is composed of

other types of supplies, notably money (4.3 %), vehicles (1.2 %), seats (1.2 %) and clothes

(0.8 %).

45 The second non-prototypical meaning of help that will be addressed is helpavoid.


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4. Helpavoid

46 An examination of an Early Modern English corpus, such as the Lexicons of Early Modern

English (LEME) (Lancashire 1999), makes it possible to document the appearance of the

meaning of helpavoid. This corpus gathers dictionaries and technical lexicons, as well as

medical treatises, which proved key to understanding the semantic shift between

prototypical help and helpavoid.

4.1. The emergence of helpavoid

47 In Early Modern English, a monotransitive use of help started to appear alongside the help

+ NP + infinitive structure. From the original meaning of help derived the sense ‘facilitate’,

present in (29), and ‘alleviate/cure’, present in (30):

(29) Myrtles are [...] verye profitable to helpe the restoring of broken bones.

(Lanfranco of Milan, Chirurgia, 1565)

(30) If it be strened, it helpeth and swageth the sores in a mannes mouthe.

(Anonymous, Banckes’s Herbal, 1525)

48 This meaning is still in use, as indicated by example (16) above.

Several utterances included in LEME show how the sense ‘alleviate/cure’ could have led

to a notion of protection or prevention. This is notably the case of (31):

(31) The floures of Lavander [...] mixed with Cinnamon, Nutmegs, and Cloves,

made into pouder, and given to drinke in the distilled water thereof, doth

helpe the panting and passion of the heart. (Thomas Johnson, The Herbal or

General History of Plants, 1633)

49 It is possible to imagine that such a treatment, used primarily to cure tachycardia and

shortness of breath, was subsequently used to stave off the occurrence of such symptoms,

as nothing in the utterance explicitly specifies the moment when the drug is to be used:

at T-1 or at T+1 (T symbolising the moment when the dysphoric situation occurred).

Similarly, in the following sentence, with a prepositional object, it is not made explicit

whether the medicine is used for its curative or for its preventive properties.

(32) It helpeth against the bitings of any venomous beast, either taken in

drinke, or outwardly applied. (Thomas Johnson, The Herbal or General History

of Plants, 1633)

50 Although this medicine is probably supposed to be used after a bite, it is not specifically

encoded in the sentence. In addition, the use of the preposition against resembles the

structure of the verb protect and this makes it possible for hearers/readers to infer that

the medicine can be used preventively. One can therefore suggest that the lack of

semantic explicitness of such structures, together with the frequent use of therapeutic

drugs for prophylactic purposes, may have led to the appearance of helpavoid.

51 Both prototypical help and helpavoid imply the existence of some dysphoric state of affair.

The common semantic features between them can be described as an ‘action with a

euphoric outcome’. Whether an unfortunate situation was solved after it happened (at T+1


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) or solved by avoiding its occurrence altogether (at T-1) was considered irrelevant and

was conceptually backgrounded at the time when the semantic shift took place.

52 This analysis confirms that the focus of speaker-oriented theories on the act of

communication itself is well-founded. By studying utterances, rather than mere

sentences, it becomes possible to uncover the decisive role that communication plays on

the evolution of the lexicon. The interaction between speaker and co-speaker, and the

various phenomena that it implies, such as potential semantic and structural ambiguity,

as well as pragmatic inferences, are at the heart of language change (cf. Traugott &

Dasher [2002]).

53 Additionally, the preposition against, used in (35), substantiates the tenet that meaning

emerges through a combination of lexical and grammatical items. This rather marginal

prepositional use of help contributes to expanding the semantic interpretation of the verb

by imperceptibly shifting its meaning towards that of other verbs used in similar

prepositional constructions.

54 Finally, the meaning of helpavoid became clearly distinct from ‘alleviate/cure’, as can be

seen in the unambiguous sentence that follows:

(33) I do not believe the prisoner could help the accident. (Old Bailey, 1834)

4.2. The lexicalisation of can(-ed) not helpavoid

55 Since the beginning of Late Modern English, helpavoid has been associated with the notions

of capacity and negation, forming a rather loose colligation, i.e. a recurring combination

of lexical items and grammatical features (Firth [1957]; Sinclair [1991]). Subsequently, the

number of expressions used to refer to capacity gradually narrowed, as the following

examples, which are no longer attested, show:

(34) This was a heavy piece of news to my nephew, but there was no way to

help it but to comply. (William Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, 1719)

(35) [T]o say all in a word, he doats upon you; and I begin to see it is not in

his power to help it. (Samuel Richardson, Pamela, 1740)

(36) It is impossible to help lamenting the unhappiness of Sir Edward.

(Charlotte Smith, Ethelinde, 1789)

56 These examples demonstrate that non-prototypical expressions of inability have

decreased over time. Additionally, the verb ceased to be a real negative polarity item

(NPI). In the 19th century, the use of can help was licensed by a wide range of co-texts, like

other typical NPIs3. For instance, it could be licensed by a subject containing a negative

quantifier (37), by a wh-question (38) or by a than-clause (39):

(37) No man, outside of a deaf and dumb asylum, who is awakened at

midnight on the 3d of July with – a hideous din that he knows will grow

worse and worse for the next twenty-four hours, can help feeling that the

Declaration of Independence was a terrible mistake, and that slavery and

quiet are infinitely preferable to freedom and fire-crackers. (COHA, 1876,

NEWS)

(38) It was difficult to understand how the snow could help melting in such

an atmosphere. (COHA, 1832, NON FICTION

(39) I can no more help loving you than I can help breathing. (COHA 1885,

FICTION)


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11

57 These types of contexts have dramatically decreased over time and the use of can help

now tends to be limited to cases when it is in the syntactic scope of a negative particle

(Pinson [2011]).

58 As the means of expressing capacity became fixed and as the verb ceased to be attested in

many NPI licensing co-texts, it lost most of its flexibility. All of these elements suggest

that can (-ed) not help has undergone a process of lexicalisation: “the change whereby in

certain linguistic contexts speakers use a syntactic construction or word formation as a

new contentful form with formal and semantic properties that are not completely

derivable or predictable from the constituents of the construction or the word formation

pattern” (Brinton & Traugott [2005: 96]). Can (-ed) not help is now completely lexicalised,

as it is virtually impossible to use never instead of not or to use intervening material in the

middle of the multi-word expression (see Pinson [2011] for a more detailed analysis of

this process).

59 The lexicalisation of can(-ed) not helpavoid facilitates communication, as the use of

unanalysable chunks improves fluency and gives the speaker more time for language

planning (cf. Bolinger [1975]; Kuiper [1996]) and they are easier to interpret, since they

can potentially limit cases of semantic ambiguity.

60 In its lexicalised version, can(-ed) help means that somebody performs an action even

though they would rather not. The euphoric component associated with the non-

realisation of the action is still valid today. For example, a speaker may say I couldn’t help

but laugh during a solemn celebration or I can’t help thinking that … , followed by a

comment which is unpleasant for the co-speaker or for a third party.

61 With this lexicalised multi-word verb, the subject is deagentivised and presented as an

undergoer (patient or experiencer). This use is therefore far from being pragmatically

neutral as it is meant to excuse the referent of the subject. The process being presented as

unavoidable, it implies that the subject is not responsible for it (see Pinson [2011] on the

pragmatic specificities of the can(-ed) help but V structure).

5. Helpcontribute

62 The euphoric denotation expressed by the verb help is present in all the different types of

help mentioned so far. However, other uses can be found today, as Mair [1995] noted:

(40) Nor have they eliminated the unburned hydrocarbons which help

produce the smog that blankets such a motor-ridden conurbation as Los

Angeles. (quoted in Mair [1995: 125])

(41) Negro cabbie John W. Smith, whose arrest for tailgating a police car [...]

helped spark five days of rioting [...], was found guilty of assaulting a

policeman. (quoted in Mair [1995: 125])

63 These recent examples are particularly striking as they do not exhibit the same euphoric

denotations as the other uses of help.

64 In order to have a better understanding of this peculiar usage, I have looked for instances

of the string ‘helped (to) create’ in COHA. I chose this particular string because it appears

more frequently than ‘helped (to) spark’ and ‘helped (to) produce’, and because, like

produce, the verb create can be followed both by negative and by positive referents.


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12

5.1. Helped (to) create: a case study

65 As Deléchelle [1998] noticed, structures with no NP after help are increasing. The

following graph represents the raw figures for the string helped create and helped to create

in COHA.

Figure 2. Occurrences of helped to create (in dark grey) and helped create (in light grey) in COHA

66 The meaning ‘contribute’ correlates with a monotransitive structure, which can be

associated to cases of prototypical help with a recipient omitted, as in the following

example:

(42) Jear [rope], a piece of a hauset (in great ships) fastend to the main yard

and foreyards, to help to hoyse up the yard and succor the ties. (Elisha Coles,

An English Dictionary, 1676)

67 The recipient can be omitted because it is inferable or generic, as in (42), where it refers

to sailors.

The compatibility with dysphoric outcomes, however, is a more recent development,

even though a few isolated cases of help with a dysphoric outcome can be found in Early

Modern English, in different types of structures:

(43) Assez escorche qui tient le pied: Prov. He does ill ynough that helps to

doe euill. (1611, Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionary of the French and English Tongues

)

(44) At last, I went to Sea of my own Accord, against my Mother’s Will; which

I fear was the Cause of breaking her Heart, and has been a Means of helping

me to this unfortunate End, because I disobeyed her. (Old Bailey, 1749)

68 In spite of these early examples, it seems that the use of help followed by a dysphoric

outcome remained extremely marginal before the 19th century. A look at COHA may be

useful to understand how the compatibility with dysphoric results became possible.

69 First, some examples show that it is not easy to classify utterances in terms of euphoricity

or dysphoricity, because speakers may not agree on the axiological evaluation of the

outcome:


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13

(45) The impression is spreading here that the Soviet Union and the United

States, far from having shaped alliances in their own images, have really

helped to create an abundance of nationalisms that now threaten to engulf

both in a display of old-fashioned European diplomacy played out over a

worldwide scale. (COHA, 1963, NEWS)

(46) Thus, to say (in implied criticism) that the free alliances "have really

helped to create an abundance of nationalisms" is in fact to state that the

alliances have achieved success. (COHA, 1963, NON FICTION)

70 Secondly, a substantial proportion of utterances with an animate subject contain

outcomes which were not negative at first, but turned out to be dysphoric subsequently:

(47) The epidemic of strikes spreading throughout the country indicates that

workers will no longer be the pawns of an acquisitive society and the victims

of the industries they have helped to create. (COHA, 1937, NEWS)

71 The creation of the industries was not necessarily a bad thing for workers at first, since it

provided them with jobs and money, and maybe a feeling of achieving something, of

being part of technological progress. It is only at a later stage that the industries started

to be dysphoric for them.

72 Another clear illustration of a chronologically ambivalent axiological evaluation of the

outcome is provided by the following example, given here in context:

(48) Indeed, it was a part of Mr. Pulitzer’s instinct for polities and sagacity in

reading the future in the present that he should have been so often on the

right side of important public questions. It is a different matter when we

consider the type of journalism which Mr. Pulitzer first fully exemplified in

New York. […] He came to feel that what he had helped create had somehow

become too powerful and had got away. […] From the first days of his control

of the World, he struck out boldly for a new kind of “publicity” in journalism.

But that word may mean many things. It covers not only the exposure of

political scoundrels, but it denotes, in practice, a kind of constant clamor

rising into a shriek, with a daily prying into private affairs as if nothing

existed anywhere which should not be dragged into the light of day, and

worse than all, a lurid exploitation of crime and nastiness. (COHA, 1911,

MAGAZINE)

73 As can be seen, Pulitzer was unable to foresee the future excesses of investigation

journalism. The outcome of the process is therefore ambivalent, as the axiological

evaluation varied across time, from positive to negative.

74 The idea behind these examples is that the person responsible was not aware of the

negative consequences that the action would subsequently have. The use of help thus

highlights the fact that the helper unwittingly contributed to something which turned

out to be dysphoric.

75 This aspect is present in the following example, which underlines the fact that the

dysphoric situation in question is happening unbeknownst to the public:

(49) For when we fail to practice tolerance in our individual lives, we

jeopardize the structure for all. Insidiously, intolerance grows in its place.

This does not happen suddenly, but by imperceptible degrees: a privilege is

shorn away, a censorship erected, a hatred takes root, oppressive legislation

is enacted. If we passively connive in this process, neglecting to protest

unless our own rights and opinions are attacked, we shall discover some day


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that despotism has crept up on us – that we are about to be swallowed one

and all by the monster we have helped create. (COHA, 1938, MAGAZINE)

76 This point is also put forward in a few examples which evoke the concept of (tragic)

irony. This literary notion refers to the fact that a character is unaware of an unfortunate

state of affairs that the reader/spectator knows about:

(50) Ironically, some actions taken by the park service have helped to create

problem bears. One example in recent years was the approval given by the

park service for construction in Yellowstone of Grant Village, a mammoth

complex that includes lodging units for nearly three thousand people, along

with parking lots, recreational facilities, restaurants, a sewage treatment

plant, a post office, and several other facilities. It was built on the confluence

of several trout streams, a place that until the construction of Grant Village

was a primary grizzly feeding site. Doubtless bears returning to the area in

search of nourishment will come too close to people and will be dispatched

as problem animals. (COHA, 1989, NON FICTION)

(51) Once humans decided to do anything but walk, once they became

“traffic,” they had to learn a whole new way of getting around and getting

along. What is the road for? Who is the road for? How will these streams of

traffic flow together? Before the dust kicked up by the bicycles had even

settled, the whole order was toppled again by the automobile, which was

beginning to careen down those same “good road” the cyclists themselves, in

a bit of tragic irony, had helped create. (COHA, 2008, NON FICTION)

77 In view of these examples, one may hypothesise that it is through these ambivalent cases,

in which the referent of the subject is unwittingly responsible for an unfortunate state of

affairs, that the innovative meaning of help arose.

5.2. Grammaticalisation hypothesis

78 According to Mair [1995]; [2002]; [2006], this semantic innovation is a sign that the verb

help is undergoing a process of grammaticalisation, but it is actually difficult to prove or

disprove this hypothesis. The semantic broadening and the increase in token frequency

and type frequency described by Mair are real, but help still behaves like normal verbs in

many respects, notably because it does not exhibit any of the NICE properties (cf.

Deléchelle [1998]; McEnery & Xiao [2005]).

79 Mair does not define the category that he calls “concatenation or modal idiom” [2006:

139] and no syntactic test is offered to identify this category. The only test mentioned is

the replacement of the verb by a preposition, which is supposed to illustrate semantic

broadening: “A ‘plan to help youngsters find jobs’ is nothing more specific than a ‘plan for

them to find jobs’; and money used to ‘help pay’ for something is just money used for

paying something” [1995: 265].

80 However, this test, from Rohdenburg [1990: 146-1484], seems problematic for two reasons.

First, the fact that a word is acquiring the same distribution as a preposition certainly

does not make it a modal auxiliary. Secondly, if this test was really valid, it would mean

that the following verbs were also grammaticalising, which is doubtful:

(52) David McCreary is coming on to replace Tommy Jackson. [… coming on

for / instead of Tommy Jackson]. (Rohdenburg 1990: 146-148)

(53) I’ve worked very hard to write this book.

(53’) I’ve worked very hard on this book.


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(54) He helped me (to) get over my addiction.

(54’) He helped me with my addiction.

81 Therefore, the only element that is decisive in establishing that help does not behave

syntactically like prototypical lexical verbs is the omission of to.

82 When a lexical item becomes grammaticalised, one usually observes a phenomenon

known as layering (Hopper [1991: 22]). This means that the grammaticalised item and the

same item in its ungrammaticalised version can coexist. For example:

(55) I’m going to London next week.

in which going to isn’t grammaticalised, coexists with

(56) John’s not going to be happy about it.

in which it is grammaticalised.

83 When grammaticalisation is accompanied with phonetic erosion, it does not concern the

non-grammaticalised item (Bybee [2002]):

(55’) *I’m gonna London next week.

84 Yet, in the case of help, the omission of to initially concerned cases with animate subjects,

in which the verb really has its prototypical meaning, as in:

(57) The Prosecutor’s Wife depos’d, That the Prisoner being employed to

help her Wash, carried away the Goods. (Old Bailey, 1717)

(58) Mrs. Taylor her Mistress deposed, that on Sunday the 26th of October,

the Prisoner complain’d that she was not well, and had the Gripes, &c. but

did help her make the Bed, and she afterwards went out to Church leaving

her to dress Dinner. (Old Bailey, 1718)

(59) He did not confess to me any more Robberies, but own’d a great number

of small Thefts, he constantly did as occasion offer’d; and in Alleviation of his

Guilt in this Affair, he said, he was no farther concern’d in the Robbery, only

that he was present at the Time of committing it, he being 7 Yards distant,

and did not help them take any Thing from Mr. Daniel. (Old Bailey, 1742)

85 The high compatibility between an animate subject, who actually brings help in the literal

sense, and the omission of to has been noticed by many researchers, as mentioned above.

So, how could the omission of to be a sign that help is grammaticalising if it originally

affected only the prototypical meaning of help?

86 Finally, Mair considers that “adding to before the infinitives would be slightly

incongruous” in cases which display negative effects [2002: 126]. Yet, the expression of a

negative outcome does not necessarily coincide with the omission of to. In my study on

helped (to) create, I even notice a higher proportion of negative outcomes in combination

with the use of to than with the omission of to.

Table 3. Proportion of negative outcomes following helped create and helped to create in COHA

Proportion of negative outcomes

“helped create”26 %

(38/146)


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16

“helped to create42,7 %

(41/96)

87 Therefore, Mair’s hypothesis of grammaticalisation, however tempting, is slightly

undermined by these observations on the omission or presence of to.

88 After this analysis of the emergence of the non-prototypical meanings of help, it could be

useful to provide a grid which synthetises the similarities and the differences between

the various meanings of the verb.

6. Synthesis

89 The following table is meant to capture the diversity of help by means of a restricted set of

features.

Table 4. A description of the polysemy of help

NEAR

SYNONYMACTION

SHARED

ACTIONCHANGE

EUPHORICITY:

RESOLUTION OF

PROBLEM

ARGUMENT STRUCTURE

assist + + +

+ 3

S + V + {recipient} +

{themeprocess}

e.g. He helped me (to) do it.solved at T+1

serve + - +

+ specific: lack 3

Si + V + {recipient i} +

{theme}

e.g. He helped himself to

some tea.

transfer at T+1

avoid + - -

+ 2

S + can-(-ed) not V +

{themeprocess}

e.g. We couldn’t help

laughing .

solved at T-1

alleviate + - +

+ 2

S + V + {theme}

e.g. The drug helped the

pain.solved at T+1

contribute + + + -

2

S + V + {theme=process}

e.g. They helped (to)

produce a smog.


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17

90 Table 4 provides a semantic description of the various meanings of help based on a

selection of distinctive features and it displays the correspondence between these

meanings and their respective argument structure. Although all the senses of help involve

an action of some kind related to a situation x, not all of them express an action resulting

in a new situation, since helpavoid implies the absence of change. Similarly, the meaning

‘contribute’ differs from all the others as it does not involve the resolution of some

problematic situation.

91 The semantic evolution of the verb could be described as a movement from ‘interaction’

to ‘action’, with a combination of parameters such as [+/- dysphoric situation] and

[dysphoric situation solved at T+1 or at T-1]. In the most recent meaning of help, the notion

of interaction has diluted into a mere denotation of shared action, i.e. the origin of the

process is one cause among other potential factors. This is virtually the only trace of the

prototypical meaning of help left, as the euphoricity component is no longer applicable

here.

92 These observations can be summarised as follows, in a graph representing the semantic

evolution of the verb help.

Figure 3. The semantic evolution of the verb help

Conclusion

93 The polysemous verb help displays a wide variety of meanings, some of which are even

contradictory. It is possible to find some semantic core that encapsulates all of them,

because they all refer to an action related to a given situation. However, this scenario is

so general that it fails to really account for what the verb help actually means. I have

therefore adopted a diachronic perspective, as it seems better suited to explain what each

secondary meaning has in common with the prototypical one.

94 Quite clearly, syntax and semantics are interrelated, as each structure reflects a different

meaning. The first monotransitive use, meaning ‘alleviate’, which still exists today, gave

rise to the sense ‘avoid’, by pragmatic inference: ‘if x cures y, then x can also be used to

avoid y’. The second monotransitive use gave rise to the neutral meaning ‘contribute’,

which is compatible with dysphoric outcomes. The elliptical prepositional version of

prototypical help, with the rather broad meaning ‘assist in reaching or obtaining’, split

into two uses, the spatial use and the meaning ‘serve’.


Lexis, 9 | 2015

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95 The fact that meanings are so divergent can partly be explained by the distinct

phenomena which have been at play. Semantically speaking, we observe a case of

narrowing (help to obtain => serve) and a case of broadening (help => contribute).

Syntactically speaking, we note that helpavoid underwent lexicalisation, while helpcontribute

may correspond to a case of grammaticalisation, although this hypothesis remains hard

to prove.

96 The strict correspondence between form and function probably explains why it is

possible to have such a wide array of meanings for the same word. No two uses share the

same argument structure and the same type of complementation. Thus, maximally

isomorphic constructions compensate for the lack of isomorphism of the verb.

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NOTES

1. It is difficult to be very specific regarding the date when this change occurred. Indeed, it is still

possible to use purpose clauses with help today and opinions still vary concerning the status of

infinitive clauses after this verb (see Mair [1990] and Quirk et al. [1985]). However, the diachronic

connection between purpose clauses and infinitive complements is well documented (e.g. Los

[2005] and Haspelmath [1989]). The following sentence shows that this change had been

established by at least the late sixteenth century in the case of help: What Letters did he help the

Frenche Ambassador to conveye into Scotlande? (Collection of State Papers relating to Affaires in the

Reign of Queen Elizabeth [1571], published in 1759 by Cecill William).

2. The near-synonyms given here are used to illustrate the different meanings of help. They are

not necessarily commutable with help in context because help displays several syntactic

peculiarities: e.g. the omission of to does not occur with other verbs of assistance and the use of

the complementiser but has completely disappeared in unmarked contemporary English, except

after cannot help (see Pinson [2011] on the use of but after cannot help).

3. Negative polarity items never occur in positive assertions using the simple past (Giannakidou

[1998]). By contrast, such items occur when they are in the syntactic scope of a) a negative

particle, b) a restrictive particle, c) a subject containing a negative quantifier, d) a subject

containing a restrictive quantifier. They are also licensed by e) a negation with inverse scope i.e.

when the item is “within the semantic scope of an expression which does not c-command it at S-

structure” (de Swart [1998: 179]), f) wh- and yes/no questions, g) if-clauses, h) than-clauses and i)

before-clauses.

4. G. Rohdenburg, “Aspecte einer vergleichenden Typologie des Englischen und Deutschen”, in C.

Gnutzmann, Kontrastive Linguistik, Lang, Frankfurt, 1990, 133-152.

ABSTRACTS

The verb help is highly polysemous and some of its meanings even seem contradictory. In order

to try and understand how this polysemy came into being, I propose a look back at examples


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from the early modern period onwards, so as to trace the link that unites each secondary

meaning with the original meaning of help. These observations are compiled in a synthetical

table and a graph, which show how a limited range of semantic features and syntactic structures

interact to generate meaning.

Le verbe help est hautement polysémique et certaines de ses acceptions semblent même

contradictoires. Afin de comprendre comment cette polysémie s’est mise en place, nous

proposons un retour en arrière commençant à la période élisabéthaine pour retrouver ce qui unit

chaque sémantisme secondaire au sens originel de help. Ces observations sont compilées dans un

tableau et un schéma synthétiques, qui montrent comment un nombre limité de traits

sémantiques se combine avec la syntaxe pour permettre l’émergence du sens.

INDEX

Mots-clés: polysémie, glissement sémantique, lexicalisation, grammaticalisation

Keywords: polysemy, semantic shift, lexicalisation, grammaticalisation

AUTHOR

MATHILDE PINSON

Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, SeSyLiA

[email protected]


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23

mailto:[email protected]

on the polysemy of help - openedition

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